


The Gift of a Name

by Shadsie



Series: Robin and Jerome's Excellent Adventures [1]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Death Rituals, Gen, Gore, Horde clone culture, No actual violence, a funeral for a horde-clone, aftermath of war, all-oc fic, graphic descriptions of decay, naming ritual, odd jobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26265799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadsie/pseuds/Shadsie
Summary: A pair of clones has made it their occupation to seek out the remains of their brothers that were slain during the events of the invasion and occupation of Etheria.  Locals who find bodies know to call upon them, for it has become an important part of emerging clone-culture to bury no one without the gift of a name.  Only fellow brothers are fit to do this for their own.
Series: Robin and Jerome's Excellent Adventures [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1940374
Comments: 10
Kudos: 48





	The Gift of a Name

  
**The Gift of a Name**  
  
  
  
The two clones stayed a few feet behind the Etherians leading them, careful of any sudden movements. Etherians tended to be edgy around their kind. Even the gentlest among them could elicit a startle, and for good reason. It was only a few months ago that they were all steadfast servants of Horde Prime, bullying and brutalizing the populace. There reportedly hadn’t been any casualties among the Erelandians, given that there were few fighters among them and village had surrendered quickly. The common people of the area were as fearful of their native Princesses as they had been of the Horde and so had little in the way of ardent loyalty to either their native government or the invading one, regardless of the fact that they had been technically under the keeping of Bright Moon.   
  
Mayor Button led the way, followed by his assistant, Lady Chanterelle. The two fungi-folk pushed their way through underbrush in the forest outside of their city. The two Horde-clones following them at a safe-distance looked all around. The trees, birds and insects of Etheria were still new to them – and delightful.   
  
The clones were among those that had distinguished themselves with garb and accessories asserting their likes and defining them as individuals. They had chosen names and their eyes and teeth glowed in their current favorite colors. Whether the ambient-magic of Etheria allowed this or the clones had some kind of internal cybernetic-setting connected to their brains for this, Etherians did not know. It seemed to be a secret that the clones kept to themselves, if even they knew the reason for it.   
  
One of the two on the search today was a red-eyed specimen with light gray-blue hair. He had run into suspicion over being mistaken for the one that the brothers were calling “The First of the Named.” Whenever that happened, he was quick to point out that his preferred hair-dye was a lighter shade and that he patterned his colors after a bird. He wore his hair in a short ponytail. He wore orange, blues and grays and had taken to calling himself “Robin.” He wore a silver-colored armor pauldron on one shoulder, to which was attached a cape that he took great care to keep from getting snagged on tree branches.   
  
Robin’s partner-clone was “Jerome.” He had picked it from a list of name-suggestions that some Etherian-humans had given him because he’d liked the sound of it. His eyes were blue and his hair was un-dyed, but long and styled half-way in a bun. He wore a simple black dress with a gray over-wrap in a common Bright Moon-style. He was one of the few clones that wore eyeglasses. Some wore empty frames as a fashion-statement, but Jerome was found to have mild nearsightedness. It was a defect that had somehow fallen beneath the notice of Horde Prime – possibly because it had only begun recently and he had been too busy with the war. As it turned out “Horde Prime sees all” had only applied to that which he cared to pay attention to. Many clones had managed to hide small defects for a long time before they were discovered. Those that remained had begun treating each other and being aided by sympathetic Etherians.   
  
“Over here somewhere, as I remember,” Mayor Button called out.   
  
Robin sniffed the air. “I can smell it,” he said solemnly.   
  
Jerome twitched. “It’s like the battlefield!” he said in an anxious voice.   
  
Between the two, Robin was the calm one, prone to speaking in a slow, measured manner. Jerome was the excitable one, seeming to suffer from an almost perpetual anxiety. Robin kept up with some of the quiet ways of an on-ship service-clone and seemed to retain the ghost of fear that if he let himself be too emotional that some remnant of Horde Prime would see and punish him. Jerome was quite a bit freer, but newly-loosed emotions had come as a flood for him. After certain patient Etherians and their first named-brother had taken care of them, they had taken care of each other, Robin generally taking the lead to guide Jerome through his moods. Each of their states weren’t so much something newly-discovered as they were newly-unleashed; something of a natural inclination to each of them that had come out when their source of suppression was gone.   
  
They were rather gentle-folk, too. They had many memories of battle – which they honestly were not sure were theirs or from the collective-memories of the hive mind, but left to their own devices, neither of them had any thirst to fight. Some clones did, and caused trouble and some uselessly preached a hoped-for return of Horde Prime. Robin and Jerome had embarked on another type of employment entirely.   
  
A white shape was glimpsed in between bushes.   
  
“We’re here,” Chanterelle said with a gag. She pressed a handkerchief to her face. “It’s… not as bad as when I first found him. A lot of the smell has died down.”   
  
“It is a disappointment that we could not contact you earlier.” Mayor Button added, turning to the clones.   
  
“We are carried far and wide across Etheria!” Jerome proclaimed, sticking a hand dramatically in the air. “We had much work in the former Fright Zone, I am afraid.”   
  
“Do not worry,” Robin said coolly. “You two should step back.”   
  
Chanterelle looked down, shame on her face. “I didn’t think much of the odor when I came out here to pick berries – I mean, there is the swamp nearby, which always has smells from scum-blooms and many wild animals live and die in this forest. I thought that maybe a deer had fallen and was best left to the scavengers. Then… well… I walked this way…”   
  
“He has lain for some time,” Robin intoned as he crouched down by the body.   
  
The two Erelandians stepped back as Jerome stepped forward. They all looked down at one very dead Horde-clone. He was on his back, his once-white clothing was dingy and soaked through with dark patches. The ground was stained beneath him in the blacks and browns of rot.   
  
Robin parted torn fabric at his chest. The living man grunted at the movement of tiny creatures that spilled out by his fingers. Jerome wore a look of distress as his partner took care to examine the wound.   
  
“A simple puncture-wound made by a bladed weapon,” Robin said. A bit of metallic-surface glinted in the daylight beneath the darkness of decaying flesh. “Whatever it was hit the heart and the stabilizers. Our brother was likely surprised, but did not suffer.”   
  
Jerome let out a breath that he was holding in. He turned to the mushroom-folk. “Do your people wield swords?” he asked.   
  
“N-no,” Mayor Button replied.   
  
“Some of us use knives,” Chanterelle said, “For kitchen-work.”   
  
“The skirmish in this area was quick,” Robin said. He turned and actually smiled at Chanterelle and Button. “What fighters you had among you were exceptionally brave.”   
  
“No…no we aren’t!” Chanterelle said defensively as she clung to her mayor’s arm. “I swear I just found him!”   
  
“Don’t be afraid, please!” Jerome begged. “We bear no ill will!”   
  
“He is not one I remember feeling dying… far more fell among my own flock in the Kingdom of Snows,” Robin said. “And what I mean was that… we are large and fierce. Whoever did this risked much to defend your village.”   
  
“Fat lot of good it did us!” Chanterelle complained. “We still got captured.”   
  
“Indeed,” Robin said, closing his eyes and smoothing out the fabric over the fatal wound on the corpse. “But that does not diminish the courage of your people. We respect bravery in battle, even that of the people of many doomed planets that live in our memories.”   
  
Chanterelle shivered. “I think we would rather not hear about that,” Mayor Button said.   
  
“Can we ascertain which of us he was?” Jerome asked. “Time and the elements of this planet have not been kind to him.”   
  
Robin stroked the corpse’s exposed cheek, drawn tight against the bone. The face had even sharper lines than their species had when living. The head was rolled to the side. Robin gently lifted the slain clone’s head. Jerome jumped back upon seeing the rot and ichors on the side that had rested on the forest floor, greeted by a half-smile of teeth with dulled green enamel where flesh had been taken from the jaw by scavenging insects.   
  
“Wait…is he?” Jerome asked. “I think I have met this one outside of strictly the hive-mind.”   
  
“How can you tell?” Chanterelle asked, innocently enough.   
  
Jerome narrowed his gaze at her. “We may have been designed to look the same, but there were always… small differences.”   
  
The mushroom-woman nodded.   
  
“There is only one way to know for sure who he was,” Robin spoke slowly.  
  
“Brother! With the way he is, you might corrupt yourself!” Jerome yelped.   
  
Robin held a hand up, still cradling the dead man’s head in one hand. “I shall take great care,” he said. “I’ll not get a full picture, given the state of the organic brain, but the inorganic data-storage should still be intact.”   
  
Robin carefully took something out of a pouch upon his belt – a long, metal-covered cable. He passed one end of it into Jerome’s hands. Jerome wiped the end of it with a solution-covered cloth.  
  
“Are you sure?”   
  
“Yes, I’m sure. I’ll not dive long.”   
  
Jerome looked back at the Erelandians. “Be ready with the rest of the disinfectant.”   
  
Mayor Button began unpacking a bag that he’d carried.   
  
Robin hissed in momentary pain as Jerome plugged one end of the cable into the port at the base of his neck. Robin took the other end of the cable and carefully plugged it into the port on the same location of the deceased. He laid the latter’s head back down to it’s previous tilt on the ground and stared into empty space for several minutes.  
  
“Is your friend gonna be okay?” Chanterelle asked Jerome.   
  
Jerome smiled. “Yes. This is standard for our ceremony.”   
  
Robin blinked and uncoupled the cable from the dead clone. Jerome helped him with his end of it.   
  
“This was the one who loved to stare at the stars out of the port windows on the beta-level and most-often took patrol-duty there” he said. He nodded to Jerome. “Do you remember when we got the trill through the hive-mind when we were passing the Sol 153-B nova?”   
  
“Yes, brother, I do. It was not ordered by Horde Prime, but he allowed us to see what the fuss was about.”   
  
“It was this one who saw it first and alerted us.”   
  
“It was… a blessing.”   
  
Robin held the deceased’ left hand and looked fondly upon his face, “Yes, but he had loved it best.”   
  
Robin and Jerome both stood up and approached their new fungal friends. They gently took cloths from them soaked in a disinfectant-agent and wiped down the cable before returning it to Robin’s satchel, their hands and anything else that had come in contact with the body.   
  
“So,” Mayor Button asked, “He can be buried now?”   
  
The two clones nodded at once. “I do believe that we have a name for him to be buried under,” Jerome said.   
  
The two clasped hands and stood respectfully at the feet of their fallen brother. They bowed their heads.   
  
“Nova,” Robin said.   
  
“Nova,” Jerome repeated.   
  
They then spoke in unison. “You had no name in life. You are given this gift now and forever. Be at peace.”   
  
They then unlatched their palms and turned to the Erelandians. “Thank you,” Robin said.   
  
“We’ll get volunteers from the town with shovels, then,” Mayor Button said. “Are you sure you would have him just buried here?”   
  
“It is where he fell,” Jerome said, looking over his shoulder back at the brother. “In the past, we left our dead simply to decay when on a planet or… we did things that you might find worse.” His ears drooped and his shoulders sagged. “When any of us fell on the ships, we did… recycling. And, of course, we gave our life-force to Horde Prime.”   
  
Lady Chanterelle looked like she was about to become ill. She felt it and she was surprised that she hadn’t already vomited given the ambient odor. It, indeed, wasn’t as bad as when she’d first found the body, the decay process now at something of a “drying stage” rather than one of the bloated stages. She was sure that too many tales of clone life under Prime would set her over the edge. Robin seemed to notice this and took his living brother by the shoulder.   
  
“These Etherians do not need to know the details.”   
  
“Do you have any dates?” Button asked. “I mean, you don’t exactly have birthdays, but… a coming out of the pod date to the invasion of Etheria, perhaps? Something to mark his lifespan?”   
  
Robin shook his head. “He was never free,” he said sadly. “We are making ‘birthdays’ out of the days we choose our names. It would not be appropriate. In fact, it may be an intrusion on our part to give our fallen nameless brothers names when they unable to accept or reject them; but we want them to be known in some way. We give each of them we find the gift of a name so that they might be free in death in a way they were not in life.”   
  
“Is there anything else you would have done for him?” the mayor asked, “Anything spiritual-wise?”   
  
Jerome took the lead. He put a hand over his heart, a gesture that was new to him, something he did to mimic Etherians. “We believed only in Horde Prime – and unfortunately, his lies. That is gone for us, now. We do not know what this one would have adopted as a replacement belief-system. We do not impose and ask that no one else does. We are givers of names, nothing more.”   
  
“We shall gather flowers for Nova, as is this planet’s tradition,” Robin announced, “And we will lay him into the ground. After that, we shall take our leave.”   
  
He looked back at the newly-dubbed “Nova.”   
  
“For there are still many on this planet alone who are like him.”   
  
  



End file.
